I Hosed My Own Blog Pics On Google+

So I've decided to migrate over to Google+ from Facebook, since except for the occasional meaningful and insightful post, Facebook has become nothing more than a feed of spam for the most part - if it's not about food (barring photos of hand-made food made by my friends themselves, since I appreciate honest effort by oneself), it's about vague one-liners or it's about photos that blackmail your morality into liking them; which if you don't, then they declare you an uncaring evil person without a shred of morality - Ego masturbation by the number of Facebook likes on the part of the peeps posting the pics, more like.

Not that there's anything inherently wrong with photos of gluttony food but if that's mostly what folks post for the majority of their facebooking time, it just leaves you longing for more depth and substance. The same can be said for vague one-liners. I relish expressions that cleverly portray one's feelings and thoughts but one-liners just don't cut it. Consider the following example:

Post: Sad.
Comment: Why?

See? One-liner posts are usually followed by one-liner comments. Thing is, if you know that your friends are gonna question you about your one-liner, you might as well post with detailed information right off the bat. The following example sure sounds a heck lot more informative which also spares your responding friends the unnecessary extra step of having to ask you about your otherwise vague one-liner:

Post: I'm sad because I know that vague one-liners scream the impression that one has difficulty in self-expression but yet, people who are actually perfectly capable of expressing themselves still use them.

And about those photos that blackmail you and hold your morality hostage into liking them: they are usually photos of the unfortunate, the crippled or the abused. I can appreciate the awareness-building regarding the plight and situation of the unfortunate so that we can all ponder about how we can contribute to their welfare, no problem at all, but if they are captioned by sentences like 'Like to show your sympathy, ignore if you are uncaring and cold-hearted', even if I am a kind person who cares, I don't take kindly to threats directed at my morality like that.

Such things reek too much of likes-craving and I wonder if people who post such photos have the permissions of the unfortunate folks portrayed in the pics to do so in the first place. Whether your viewers like whatever you post ought to be up to their freedom of choice, you don't use their morality and their concept of right & wrong to blackmail them. It's sad seeing friends falling for such blackmail tactics.

And there are the folks who don't turn off their Facebook gaming feeds and folks who post links to articles and then copy and paste huge chunks from the body of the linked articles on their posts; they might as well just quote the articles in their entirety or even better, let the links remain while giving comments about what they personally think regarding the subject matter, rather than just regurgitate everything like cows.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problems with long posts at all if they are the poster's own expression of thoughts and opinions but if you link to articles, you don't vomit them out word for word. Your friends can read and they don't need to read the same thing twice (if they even bother to click the links and read, that is).

One word: SPAM.
Two words: Spam Irritates.

I'm not saying that Facebook is a 100% complete total crock of shit, of course. It does have pros over Google+ and vice-versa. Like I've mentioned above, there are occasional gems on Facebook too - the insightful posts, the clever snide remarks that say so much more when you read between their lines (it's good to ponder and think once in awhile as opposed to mindless swallowing, you know), the awareness-building photos that politely ask you to show support by liking them IF you really happen to like them without blackmailing your morality, etc.

Trouble is, the weeds far outnumber the flowers. Facebook is a total mess for the most part - for me at least. Sure, I can filter out all the crap but since there is so much crap, why should I go through all the trouble of weeding things out? Besides, if you block any of your chosen friends' posts, you will miss the gems that they sometimes post too. A 'One Shot Kill All' solution is not the proper solution here, as it kills the 'weeds' along with the 'flowers'. Sturgeon's Law comes into play on Facebook and having to weed out 90% of the whole shebang just to get to the remaining 10% is not a very productive thing to attempt.

Another issue about Facebook I find worrying is that I have friends who can tell me that they haven't been on Facebook for ages and in their next breath, blurt about the things I've posted for the past couple of days.. Seriously, just admit it already if you spend your Facebooking time playing spy. Either they are being fake by conscious choice or they are unaware that Facebook is making them fake. Since it's the decent thing to do to give your friends the benefit of the doubt, I'll close my right eye to the former possibility mentioned and stare at the latter possibility with my left eye.

Sigh..

So I've decided to migrate over to Google+ in my quest to evade the spam and the riff raff and start over on a clean slate. I decided to try Google+ when I chanced upon the following video:


People in the know say that when it comes to Google+, it's about making new friends as opposed to seeing existing friends there. I think that is true, at least from where I'm coming from, since it seems that none of my friends have an active Google+ account. Even if a meagre handful of them do, their Google+ pages are ghost towns (I did come across 4 of my Facebook friends' Google+ pages), as they still flock to old familiar Facebook and pasture there like what all their friends are doing.

I guess breaking away from the party for a quiet change can be a scary thing, especially if the change means you will be greeted with loneliness first thing after making the switch. Good thing I have Sensei there with me and good thing she loathes Facebook. Quiet quality over noisy quantity is a treasure most people throw away for fear of a lack of companionship. Good thing I'm a Scorpio, I was born a lone wolf by nature and I have no such problems :)
Can't do without a spouse though, as I have a constant craving for love.

I said 'quality' and I said 'love', I didn't say 'quantity' nor 'orgy', so I can get away from Facebook and survive on Google+. No problem there for me. Besides, it's not like I've completely deactivated my Facebook account; I still leave it there (albeit neglected but that's to be expected) as another avenue of communication for my friends there and as and when I receive notifications that my friends on Facebook have sent me messages, I'll grit my teeth, brace myself for the horror, fire up Facebook and respond to their messages. Other than that, my Facebook page is now a ghost town.

There's no telling that one's Google+ page won't end up a spamming mess like Facebook as one's social circle there expands, but for me, I'm liking the peace and quiet there for now. If things take a turn for the opposite one day, that would be a worry for another day, not today. I live for the moment when it comes to social media. I can be nomadic when it comes to such things - Not happy? Just pack up, leave, move on and seek better pastures. It doesn't have to get complicated.

When it comes to Google+, it's all about adding the correct Circles for yourself to get an enjoyable experience out of it. You don't even have to post much if you choose not to do so, just reading the posts of the proper circles you've added that pertain to your interests and hobbies is enjoyable in itself.

And finally, here's the part this blog entry's very title points at:

So I've opened a Google+ account and I found myself really liking the interface of its mobile version, though on the flip side of the coin, I dislike the webpage version of it since it looks.. how should I put it.. generic? Yeah, generic, for lack of a better word. No problem though, since I surf social media on my mobile 95% of the time.

Well, you know how setting up a brand new site goes - I went through the settings and the whole shebang setting things up and when I went to my Google+ photo albums section to take a look there, I was mystified as to why the pictures on my blog site were there. So apparently, Picasa is integrated into Google+. I don't know about you but I do not want my blog photos to be in my Google+ page. I just don't see any purpose for them to be there at all, so I deleted the entire album that held them, thinking that deleting it from Google+ only means making it disappear from Google+ and not annihilating the whole thing on my blog page itself. Stop laughing.

Then the horror dawned on me when I went over to my blog and saw this:

Hosed

By all killer recycle bins, where the freaking fuck did the photos and pictures on my blog go?! My jaw hit the floor when I realized that deleting my blog photos album on Google+ zapped them all from my blog site too. Oh bloody fuck.

Shame on you, Google. I present to you my extended middle finger for this.

Have a look at this. Looks like I'm not the only one who wandered into the minefield and got blown away without even realizing the fuck why. I don't think l saw that pop-up warning detailing the consequential deletion of the photos on my blog itself. Maybe it did and I skimped it but the point is, why should Google sync blog photos with Google+? Maybe they have valid reasons I'm not in the know of and maybe it was my own fault somehow but
This.Truly.Sucks.Donkey.Balls.

Bloody heck, so I ended up hunting down copies of all those blog photos deleted and putting them back in my blog all over again. The ordeal was exhausting as hell and you guessed it: some of the photos are lost for good since I couldn't find copies for all of them. Come on, we are talking about at least 2 years worth of blog photos here and you can't expect me to hoard everything. The only lucky thing about this tragedy is that only those photos saved in Picasa got zapped while the photos of my earlier blog entries saved via Blogpress didn't, since they are stored in a different server. That's a definite relief.

So if you spot any of my blog entries missing their pics, thank Google for me. And if you are a blogger thinking of opening a Google+ account, don't say I didn't warn you here. Do yourself a big favour and save yourself a big heartache by setting your blog pics album on your Google+ page to private mode instead of deleting the whole album.

But damn it Google, I still really like your mobile version of Google+ and I still like using it. I hate you but I like you, so WTF?

-De Lion Speaks